Organic Social Media Strategies for a Post-Covid World

Students are searching for you, all you need to do is learn how to connect with them in online spaces. 

Since COVID shocked the world, people have been isolating- something that doesn’t come naturally to us humans. But we’ve been able to stay connected to each other through online platforms. 

But without human interaction, people have been craving both connection and community. Many people are looking for ways to actively be a part of a community, learning from and empowering one another. Creating a space where like-minded people can connect could be a golden ticket marketing campaign for your business. 

Using key social media strategies, you can grow your social media engagement and build excitement about the brand you have created. AND you can do this organically. 

Knowing Your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

One of the biggest mistakes that Yogapreneurs make is throwing empty content onto their social media and hoping something sticks. They are posting just for the sake of posting rather than strategically planning the content they want to put out there to grow their engagement. 

If you know your KPIs, you are better able to gauge what is working and what is not, in order to adapt your strategy to fit what’s really working. It will also help you to figure out what content creation method works best for your business and its audience, allowing you to see which type of content you should invest more time into. 

Another problem that many Yogaprenuers make (and business owners in general), is that they are creating content on the fly. While being spontaneous brings authenticity to your content, it’s important to plan out posts in advance, ensuring you have a message to get across that will keep your audience engaged. 

Yogapreneurs are often so focused on what they know best – yoga – that they don’t have time to learn the skills they need to tackle the marketing of their business too. You need to know about KPIs and how you can measure how your marketing efforts are performing in order to make improvements in the future. 

What KPIs Should You Be Looking At? 

KPIs only work if you know what you’re looking for. These are the KPIs you should keep an eye on for each social media platform: 

Facebook:

• Post engagement
• Video views
• Post reach 
• Page views
• When your audience is online

These metrics can be found on the Facebook insights page – make sure that you’re looking at a 28-day overview to get a full spectrum of data. 

Instagram:

• Content interactions (likes, comments, saves, taps)
• Video views 
• Reel plays 
• Reach
• Content type
• Profile views
• Website taps
• Most active times for your audience

On Instagram, you can find these metrics in the content interactions tab – make sure that you’re looking at a 30-day overview to get a full spectrum of data.

Other Platforms to Look at – Youtube, TikTok, Google my Business

• You should have a specific goal that you are trying to achieve on each platform, and once you know what that is, you know what KPIs to pull. 
• Each platform will have some sort of an ‘overview’ that will show the major KPIs. 
• Example: YouTube is a video-based platform, so it makes sense that ‘Watch Time’ is one of the key metrics that you should be analyzing. This is because your videos are considered ‘good’ to the algorithm if people are watching them for an extended period of time. 

What Do You Do With All of This Data? 

Now that you know what KPIs you’ll be looking at, it’s time to find out what you’ll be doing with all of this new data you have acquired. 

• Check in with your KPIs monthly, and do a deep dive once every quarter. A deep dive will involve checking to see which posts and format of content is boosting your engagement the most. This will help you to figure out what type of content you should continue to share, and what content simply is not worth investing time into. 
• Calculate your engagement rates. You need to work out what percentage of the people seeing your content are actually engaging with it. If your engagement rate is favorable it means that the people that are following you are actually finding your content valuable/interesting. 
• Look at what people are interacting with and ask yourself the following questions: 

1. What types of content are people engaging with? 
2. What is the context of the top posts? 
3. What are people NOT engaging with? 
4. Of the posts that people are NOT engaging with, what makes these different from the ones people are engaging with? 

Super Wiz Tip: Don’t stop posting these types of low-performing posts right away. Instead, re-evaluate and promote this content in a different way that people WILL engage with. 

Next, you’ll want to calculate your engagement rate. You can use this formula to do just that, or create your own if you’re feeling a little creative:

(Post Engagement + Reel Plays +Video Plays)/Reach

These are the kinds of engagement rates you should expect if you are posting content that is truly valuable to your community. If you haven’t quite reached these engagement rates, that’s okay – it’s something to work toward in the future. 

• Facebook: 30 – 50%
• Instagram without Reels: 10 – 20%
• Instagram with Reels: 30 – 70%

The Five-Step Social Media Strategy: 

In order to create content that boosts engagement, you need to have a solid plan. Creating content on the fly just isn’t going to cut it if you’re trying to increase your engagement rate. So here’s a five-step plan that will help you along your social media journey: 

Step 1: 

Refer to your KPIs and analytics to determine the top 3-5 types of content that your community is engaging with most. These will differ between platforms. 

• Content type: Reels, videos, IGTV, Photos, Carousels, Stories, Links, Short Videos, Animated Videos, Long Videos, etc. 
• Context: Team photos, yoga postures, retail items, infographics, testimonials, text graphics, branded, non-branded, etc. 

Step 2: 

Determine the types of content that your community DID NOT engage with. Then make a plan on how you can convert this content into the top engaging types of content. 

• Testimonials – if the community didn’t engage with text testimonials, but photos of your team performed really well, then try posting a photo of your student with a hook line from the testimonial on the graphic, or add the full testimonial in the caption.
• Retail photos – If photos of clothing on a rack didn’t perform well but photos of your team did, try to combine the two. You could post photos or a Reel of your team wearing the clothing items to boost engagement while still showing off your new clothing range. 

Step 3: 

Always be proactive so that you’re not stress-planning events. 

• Stop and think: Do you have any events/promotions/holidays coming up that you need to plan content for? 
• Think about the types of content that perform well and how you can incorporate those content types into these posts so that they perform well too!

Step 4: 

Use this info to make a shot list for the content needed for the next month or quarter. 

• What photos and videos do you need to take and shoot for your posts? 
• Make a note of the timing and format needed for these pieces of content. 
• Make a list of the holidays and promotions that are coming up. 

Step 5: 

Set a day in your calendar to shoot, plan, and schedule your content.

• Get it done ahead of time so that you’re not stressing!
• Get someone to help you, or delegate this task completely. 

Create More Content, More Efficiently

Discover your inner marketer and create content that is value-driven, engaging, and speaks to your community. 

Step 1:

Determine your top pillars and their order of importance. 

• Pillars are the key topics that you want to be sharing content about. 
• Use your KPIs to determine what types of content people are engaging with most, and also think about what YOU know most about. 
• Determine the order of importance for your pillars. The most important pillars will have larger content pieces that can be atomized and cover the other pillars. 

1. Postures 
2. Studio Education 
3. Events 
4. Retail 
5. Team 
6. Community

Step 2: 

Determine what you want your golden nugget piece of content to be. 

• This is the one piece of content that you will atomize the most and create on a regular basis. 
• Example: demonstrating a posture in the form of a long video or blog post. 
• You’ll then need to break this content down into smaller pieces. This is atomization, and it will be your new best friend. You will never run out of content if you start to atomize what you already have and know.
• Make a list of all of the ‘key points’ you want to capture so you know to include them in your video or blog post. 

Step 3: 

Go through your list and make notes of HOW you’ll break up that content to determine what assets you actually need.

Doing this will help you determine what platforms and formats you need to film in and capture while you’re filming this video. Make sure you film on a good-quality camera horizontally with enough space to allow cropping of the video so it can be used for multiple mediums. 

Step 4:

Go through your other pillars and make a list of what you need. If you use the techniques you learned in the previous steps, you’ll be able to create as much content as possible. 

Step 5: 

Organize your content! 

• Create a post bank in a spreadsheet to keep an organized log of all your posts. You can even include a link to the corresponding media with each caption, making it incredibly easy to find on the day you’ll be posting. 
• Create a social media calendar in a spreadsheet so you know exactly when each post needs to be posted (include your date and time so that there’s nothing that needs to be decided on the day). 

Step 6: 

Delegate and pre-schedule your social media posts. Use a scheduling tool to upload all posts prior to the day they need to be posted, and remember – you don’t need to be the one to do this, ask a team member to take care of this task.

How Often Should You Be Posting on Social Media?

You should be posting a minimum of 3x per week on both Instagram and Facebook. The reason for this is that it takes about two days for your social media posts to stop getting engagement (in general, but this is not the case every single time). This means that you always have at least one post racking up engagement. On TikTok (if you choose to use this social media platform), posting at least once per week is a good start, but if you really want to make your mark once per day is recommended. 

Should You Be Using TikTok?

Many people think of TikTok as a platform with little to no authority. But TikTok is actually the easiest platform to go viral. Why does this matter to you as a yoga studio? TikTok will always show your content to those in your local community first. That means that potential clients will be the first to see your content, so it’s a no-brainer that it’s a great business move to create content for TikTok. 

Top Tools For Your Social Media Strategy: 

Here are a few tools that will help you along the way in order to create the best content you possibly can. 

• Creator Studio on Facebook – This is free to use and is the most reliable source for sharing and scheduling content. You are able to schedule all types of content on Facebook and Instagram (videos, photos, links, IG videos, carousels, and everything else). Because Creator Studio is made by Facebook and Instagram, there are rarely any issues with content failing to publish because of API changes.
• Planoly, Later, Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout Social – These are alternative scheduling tools that are both affordable and efficient. These are good about 90% of the time, but as APIs are changing all the time, it is common for videos or carousels to not publish to Instagram when using third-party scheduling tools. *Planoly is for Instagram only, Later, Hootsuite, Buffer or Sprout can be used for multiple platforms
• Analytics – It’s recommended to use all built-in tools that come with each platform. There are automatic analytics and data capturing pages for each, so there’s no need to use third-party tools. 

Wrapping Up Social Media Strategies for a Post Covid World

While COVID may have affected the world greatly, there’s one way that it has brought us all together. And that is to connect and create communities in online spaces. If you’re ready to take your marketing strategy to the next level, then implementing these steps toward a more focused social media strategy will help you get there. If you’re looking for more guidance on building an online community, start with being part of one! Book a free strategy session and join the Yogapreneur Collective, a powerful online community full of like-minded yogapreneurs just like you!